What is Biden's GOP 'epiphany' prediction about Trump: Did it come true?

Seven years ago, Joe Biden told voters in New Hampshire that Republicans would come around after Trump lost. They would have an "epiphany," he said. They would work with Democrats again.

Trump lost in 2020 but returned in 2024 with a popular-vote win and an Electoral College landslide. Republicans did not break with him, instead they doubled down. And now, Democratic voters are urging their leaders to understand that gentler politics is over.

"Every elected official who believes that has either retired, lost or is about to lose," said Democratic strategist Rebecca Katz, who named her firm Fight Agency after the 2024 GOP sweep.

Biden made the prediction on May 14, 2019, at a campaign stop in Nashua, New Hampshire.

Addressing the crowd, the former president said, “The thing that will fundamentally change with Donald Trump out of the White House is you will see an epiphany occur among many of my Republican friends.” Biden repeated the line months later at a Washington fundraiser.

Many Democrats bought into it at the time, especially older voters who remembered a more cooperative political era. Biden won the 2020 nomination on that message, beating Trump but the epiphany he predicted never came.

The shift in Democratic voter attitudes has been dramatic. In March 2025, an NBC News poll found that 65 percent of self-identified Democrats wanted their representatives in Congress to stick to their positions even if it meant getting nothing done. Just 32 percent wanted to compromise with Trump.

This was a major shift in their attitudes towards politics since April 2017 when the majority of Democrats wanted compromise. “The Republican epiphany did not happen,” Democratic pollster Anna Greenberg said flatly.

That shift is already changing who Democrats are nominating. In New Jersey, progressive activist Analilia Mejia defeated the party's preferred candidate in a House special election. In Maine, outsider Graham Platner built such a commanding lead in the Senate primary that two-term Governor Janet Mills, the choice of Democratic Senate leadership, dropped out entirely.

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries summed up the new posture on his own website. His tagline, a deliberate inversion of Michelle Obama's famous line, reads: "When they go low, we strike back."

Former Senate Democratic aide Adam Jentleson, who criticised Biden's epiphany rhetoric at the time, said Trump's return shattered whatever illusion remained.

He said “There was a sense that Trump was an aberration. Seeing him lose an election and then reassert his control over the GOP and get re-elected completely shattered any illusion that Republicans of sound conscience were going to rise up and take back their party.”

Amanda Litman, co-founder of the progressive group Run for Something, said, “It's Trump's party all the way down. Even when he's gone, it's still his ideology driving things forward.”

Senator Chris Murphy of Connecticut said Democrats need to fight back but also offer something to Trump's voters.

"It's not just about punching MAGA in the mouth," he said, adding, "It's about understanding there's a lot of his base that actually does believe in things like a higher minimum wage and industrial policy. We have the opportunity to win over a lot of Trump's votes if we hew tight to two messages: unrig the economy and unrig the democracy."